I am a mindfulness-based psychotherapist (#93504) who is deeply committed to helping people process painful experiences and dysfunctional relationships into secure, resilient narratives. My work with couples and individuals centers around uncovering the inner scaffolding of habitual conflict, co-dependency, and complex trauma. I also have a special focus in working with adult children of severely mentally ill parents who suffer from schizophrenia, bi-polar and borderline personality disorders. These are waters I know well.

My approach helps clients to identify and uproot deeply entrenched negative patterns that shape how they see themselves and the world, and empowers them to redeem both their relationships and life stories.

I have additional training and certification in the Gottman Method for Couples, Emotionally Focused Therapy, and an approach that combines contemplative techniques and neuroscience to promote balance, integration and well being.

As a daughter of a treatment resistant schizophrenic mother from a very early age, I found my way to psychology with the imperative to make meaning out of my own traumatic experience as a child. It also became imperative for me to learn how to relate to myself and to others without having the foundation of a loving attachment figure. In this sense--whether it's adults who are wounded around a traumatic past, or couples and individuals striving to understand how to love--at its core, my work is relational and focused around healing attachment injuries. I am very much a believer that with the right guide, even the most difficult experiences can be transformed.

While I don't privilege any one way of working, mindfulness and narrative work have become the cornerstones of my practice. After years of clinical work, it became clear to me that psychotherapy alone was insufficient to create lasting change. The road to wellness can include many pieces. I've found meditation and mindfulness practice to be a transformative tool in the healing process. This is why my work has expanded into creating the Yale Street Therapy Group, a mindfulness based psychotherapy group (see below) and Evenflow, a mindfulness company where I am both a curriculum director and meditation teacher. Both Yale Street Therapy and Evenflow are extensions my commitment to building community and ongoing avenues for support for those seeking help.

Shira has been featured in:

More about my approach

The way that we see ourselves and the world is shaped by a web of internal stories that we unconsciously repeat over and over in our minds. It can create tremendous suffering in our relationships and in our lives. It may look like depression, anxiety, uncertainty or conflict within ourselves or with loved ones.

As poet David Whyte writes "We are shaped by our shaping of the world and are shaped again in turn." In other words, our experience is filtered through our unconscious beliefs and expectations. Many of those beliefs are patently false but we believe them anyway. It's what we know.

What if you could redefine and rewrite the inner narratives that don't serve you? Redeem the story about your self that is so confining and limiting? Repair your sense of who are you?

You could radically change your life.

My approach to therapy invites you to consider that often times the symptoms that you are struggling with may also be a function of a broader narrative that needs reframing. My mindfulness-based practice is designed to empower individuals to heal long standing issues that are holding them back from living more authentic, balanced and functional lives.

My practice focuses on mindful solutions that lead to meaningful change.